a baby. I was there now, and I thought maybe she was, too. The tenderness was an ache in my chest, and I kept her wrist in my hand, felt the fineness of the bones and the steadiness of the pulse beating beneath them, and said, “I’ve seen you decide to rescue a stray dog when you’d lost your car and barely escaped with your life. I’ve seen you rescue your sisters, even though you were exhausted and scared and pushed past your limits. I know you think about helping somebody else before you think about yourself, and if that isn’t love, I don’t know what is. Service given from a glad heart—maybe that’s as good a definition of love as any. So, no, I don’t wonder if you can love. I only wonder one thing, really.”
“What’s that?” Her voice was a little breathless, a little uncertain. The first time I’d heard it that way during all of this. For a certain kind of person, being vulnerable is so much harder than being strong.
“I wonder,” I said, “who you let love you.”
Daisy
I tried to think what to say. I couldn’t.
When I was silent, Gray sighed, said, “Yeh. I know,” and took his hand away. I was glad, and I was sorry. His hand had felt good around my wrist. Not shackling me, or holding me back. Just holding on.
I said, “I’ll change the cloth for a cold one,” and got up to do it.
He said, “Daisy …” and I said, “One second.” I needed that second. I needed a minute.
When I came back with a wrung-out cold compress and took the other one off, and he opened his eyes and looked at me, I had some equilibrium back. I set the cold cloth gently over his eyes and said, “This will feel better. You should rest now. Sleep. You told me to sleep as long as I liked, and now I’m telling you.”
“Thanks,” he said. “It helps.”
I stood there for another few seconds, hesitating. More than half of me wanted to bolt, to go get busy. To go cook something, maybe. To do anything but to stand here and say this.
Just say it. Just do it. It’s the right thing. I told him, “What you said about me, before. After breakfast. I just want to say … me too.”
He took the facecloth off his eyes and looked at me again, which I could definitely have done without. “You too what?”
I said, “That I’ve never known a stronger man, or a braver one. And maybe a kinder one, too. Thanks for that. For all of it.”
After that? Well, yeh. I bolted.
14
All the Sexual Politics
Gray
I was holding a woman, my body halfway over hers on a grassy bank beside a river under the warm spring sun. My hands in her soft, dark hair, her sweet mouth opening under mine. She was making some noise deep in her throat, letting me know how much she wanted me, and all I wanted in the world was to keep hearing that noise. Her skin was warm, and when I drew my hand slowly down her side and captured a pretty little breast, she moaned, wriggled closer, and …
Licked my face.
I said something, possibly “Gah!” shoved both arms out, opened my eyes, and discovered that the brown eyes staring lovingly into mine, the soft hair brushing my arm, did indeed belong to a girl.
A girl Labrador.
Daisy threw open the door, asking, “Gray? All right?”
I was doing two things at once. Trying to get the dog off the bed, and trying to get the duvet back over myself, because I was in my undies, and, well … dream.
She noticed, I could tell, because she was trying not to smile. I don’t know what your Naughty Nurse fantasy would be, but I’m guessing it doesn’t involve being caught with a dog in your bed and an enormous erection.
I said, “Fine. I’m fine,” shoved the dog’s hairy rump the rest of the way off the bed, told her, “Stay down,” and finally succeeded in covering myself. Then I summoned up my best attempt at suave unconcern and told Daisy, “I’m fine, yeh. She was licking me. Got up on the bed. As you see.”
“Aw,” Daisy said. “She loves you. Sweet.” She’d lost the battle with the smile. “Feeling better?”
“Yeh. Headache’s mostly gone.”
“Need anything?” she asked. “I made soup.”
I may have been scowling. It was possible. “I’m not a patient. I had a headache, that’s all.”